JPMorgan hires Sakagami as chief Japan equity strategist

Bloomberg

JPMorgan Chase & Co. hired Ryota Sakagami from SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. as its chief Japan equity strategist, filling a position left vacant since Jesper Koll left the U.S. bank last year.
Sakagami joined JPMorgan in Tokyo on Wednesday, the brokerage said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg. He was ranked first among strategists in the country from 2014 to 2016, according to a survey by Nikkei Veritas.
Sakagami is at least the third senior recruit by JPMorgan for its Japan stock business in the past year as it tries to boost its ranking for research. Rie Nishihara, a former Bank of Japan official, joined the U.S. bank from Mizuho Securities Co. in May as a senior analyst covering the banking industry.
“With the addition of Sakagami, our research platform will be firmly cemented,” Hisashi Moriyama, head of Japan equity research, said in the statement. “His style of providing valuable investment ideas and strategic directions derived from his own data-driven analysis in a timely manner has been evaluated highly by investors around the world.”
Sakagami also took the top spot for equity strategy in a survey by Institutional Investor magazine in 2015 and 2016. He began his career at Nomura Research Institute in 2002 after obtaining a master’s degree from the University of Tokyo, according to the statement. He joined SMBC Nikko as chief equity strategist in 2011 after working as an economist at Nomura Holdings Inc.’s brokerage units in Tokyo and London.
Koll, the former head of equity research at JPMorgan in Tokyo, joined WisdomTree Investments Inc. last year as chief executive officer in Japan. He was hired by the U.S. bank in 2009.